James cornman and r routley and v macrae have argued that the principle of identity (alias leibniz's law) is inconsistent with certain plausible and widely accepted identity statements; e.G., "the temperature of a gas is identical with the mean kinetic energy of the molecules of the gas." they argue on this ground that the principle of identity should be modified to remove this appearance of inconsistency. The requisite modification however, Removes whatever "metaphysical teeth" the unmodified version might have had. I (...) argue in this paper that such attacks on the principle of identity are utterly unwarranted. (shrink)

This paper continues the discussion of the theory of eliminative materialism. The argument of the paper is that there is a simple principle about denotation--Called "the principle of the use of inter-Denoting terms"--Which can be seen to be clearly and necessarily true, And also to be inconsistent with the theory of eliminative materialism.

Talks about American pragmatism that is a fertile soil for growth in Western religious thought.

This paper seeks to find a middle way between the views of hume and kant on the issue of the motivation of action-hume holding reason to be important in the production of action, and kant holding action in accord with reason alone to be possible. it further suggests that sustaining the middle way requires insisting on an account of the nature of values different from that held by either hume or kant.

We assume that acting ethically is a skill. We then use a phenomenological description of five stages of skill acquisition to argue that an ethics based on principles corresponds to a beginner’s reliance on rules and so is developmentally inferior to an ethics based on expert response that claims that, after long experience, the ethical expert learns to respond appropriately to each unique situation. The skills model thus supports an ethics of situated involvement such as that of Aristotle, John Dewey, (...) and Carol Gilligan against the detached, rationalist ethics of Kant, John Rawls, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

The following is a summary of the author’s five-stage model of adult skill acquisition, developed in collaboration with Hubert L. Dreyfus. An earlier version of this article appeared in chapter 1 of Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer.

Influenced by recent neuroscientific research, the author proposes that the cognition underlying creativity should be seen as a sequential process requiring the appropriate interspersing of both intuitive and analytical modes of thought. Each of these modes may concern itself with either identifying the information that is the focus of potentially creative cognition or with the creative perspective from which to view the information. Here, perspective refers to the salience of various elements of the information set, of which some elements might (...) be seen as crucially important to a creative treatment of the situation, while other pieces of information may appear as merely contextually relevant. (shrink)

The author proposes a neural-network-based explanation of how a brain might acquire intuitive expertise. The explanation is intended merely to be suggestive and lacks many complexities found in even lower animal brains. Yet significantly, even this simplified brain model is capable of explaining the acquisition of simple skills without developing articulable rules for behavior or a model of the skill domain or an explicit identification of which observables in the environment are necessary for skillful behavior. Furthermore, no memories of prior (...) experiences during the learning phase are explicitly stored and accessed during behavior. The explanation thus calls into doubt many conventional and intuitively reasonable assumptions concerning the learning and production of intuitive expertise. (shrink)

While tourism's positive contributions to societies have long been debated, commerce based tourism activities can strengthen peaceful societies by adhering to sustainable tourism principles. This study utilizes content analysis to examine 136 tourism practices from four major awards programs for their contributions to sustainability and peace. Specific practices which illuminate each of these contributions are highlighted. The findings reveal the most common initiatives focus on environmental quality, economic development, and community nourishment efforts, with substantially less focus on initiatives to engage (...) citizen diplomacy and increase transparency. The use of awards programs to further sustainable tourism is discussed, and suggestions for future research in this important area of study are shared. (shrink)

This paper discusses the extent to which books about business ethics are purchased or read outside of tertiary institutions in Australia, whether the subject is commonly perceived as business, philosophy or both, what range of business ethics books is commonly offered for purchase, and what conclusions might be drawn from the above considerations. Investigation shows that the range and availability of business ethics books is quite limited outside of tertiary institutions, and that the general perception is that business ethics is (...) something which pertains specifically to business rather than to moral philosophy. It is likely that this tends to isolate the subject from philosophy as broadly conceived in the minds of business practitioners. (shrink)

The popular impression of Epicurean hedonism is that it advocates a life of sensual delights. Scholars know, however, that this impression is mistaken, both because of the overall conceptual structure of Epicurus’ ethics and because Epicurus prominently and repeatedly expressed such ideas as this.